Leaders in the midstate faith community have brought together math and music, two seemingly unrelated subjects, to increase comprehension among Harrisburg’s students.

About two dozen children learned about fractions and other basic math skills through music as part of an eight-week pilot program this summer at the Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church on Derry Street. “Math Through Music” was launched as a joint effort between a number of area pastors.

The effort was the brainchild of Rev. C. Wayne Baxter – a pastor and choir director at Faith Chapel Church of God in Christ on Edgemont Road – who had watched Harrisburg’s students struggle over the years.

Baxter believed that math skills could be taught through music. After doing some research, he discovered such a program already in use in a San Francisco-area school. Students there were tested, then took a math and music course. When tested again, they saw their math scores improve by about 50 percent.

"What we need is concrete, doable programs that make a difference," Baxter said. "We have to present the people of Harrisburg with hope. Analytical jobs of the future require thinkers. This is something we can do as a faith community, help our children in the critical area of math.”

Some children resist learning math through traditional methods, but music opens them up to a different process. Instead of using numbers in equations, the program uses notes and beats. Baxter said he was surprised at how quickly the students grasped the concept.

The students were tested at the beginning, middle and end of the pilot program, but those test scores won’t be available until September. While organizers say it’s tough to quantify success at this stage in the game, they can try to qualify it.

“I witnessed the progress with my own eyes,” said Richard Hughes, a religion professor at Messiah College who helped in the organization. “They learned about math and they learned about music and there was progress.”

How it got started

The Math Through Music program was established by a group of local pastors looking to bridge racial divides for the sake of providing assistance to the needy.

Hughes, who served as the director of the Messiah College Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies until June 30 of this year, collaborated with Baxter, and his brother Nathan, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. The three religious leaders settled upon holding a conference in March 2012 to bring in black and white pastors to discuss how they could come together to help the hungry and poor.

The conference attracted about 200 attendees, and the institute followed up with the conference with a series of breakfasts for about 50 or 60 area pastors in order to foster conversation stemming from the conference.

But the program ran out of money, and the breakfasts ended after about five meetings.

Hughes and the other Sider Institute faithful were determined to not let their cause of overcoming racial divides die out, so a steering committee was appointed to “follow up and figure out how to do something meaningful,” Hughes said.

Then, Baxter brought his idea of teaching children math through music to the steering committee as a way the group could reach out to and educate the children of Harrisburg.

“Reverend Baxter had the passion and he brought this idea, he said ‘these kids in the inner city often by the time they’re 15, if they’re not with the program in school, it’s difficult,’” Hughes said. “The time to catch these kids is when they’re young. He said, ‘I would like to teach math to these kids using the medium that these kids love the most, and that’s music.’”

The steering committee signed off on Baxter’s grand idea. Other major players in getting the program going were Bob Verno, pastor of West Shore Brethren in Christ, and Cedra Washington, pastor of Evangelism and Outreach at the Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church.

Getting the program going

Rev. Glenn “Woody” Dalton, of the Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church and a member of the steering committee, volunteered up his church to host the classes, cover insurance, maintain advertising and feed lunch to the children.

In addition to the gifts provided by HBIC, funding contributions came in from the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Camp Hill, the West Shore Evangelical Free Church and the West Shore Brethren in Christ Church. Donations also came in from the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and from several private donors.

“I think what struck us is that we had the resources to do it,” Dalton said. “I’ve been in the city for 33 years, and what we’re observing is that sooner is better and earlier is better in catching these kids.”

On the first of eight Monday classes, organizers -- including Baxter, who taught the class -- expected about 15 students. When 30 showed up on the first day, they weren’t going to be turned away. Consistently, about 22 to 28 students participated in the Math Through Music classes.

The young kids, between first and third grades, were working with fractions and math through music and beats. For example, understanding a quarter note gets one beat, a half note gets two beats and a whole note gets four beats, fosters an understanding of how fractions compare with each other.

“We felt this was important because a lot of these kids have no books in their home and it’s not a learning environment,” Dalton said. “A lot of times their parents don’t have an education tradition in their own family.”

The program wrapped up July 28, culminating with a final show put on the by the children who took part in the program.

What’s next?

Even though quantified results aren’t yet in, Hughes, Dalton and Baxter all said they felt they saw results in a good portion of the children who took part and noticed they had a better understanding of math throughout the summer.

The 2013 program was dubbed a pilot program, but if test results show a success rate, the group of religious leaders hopes to expand the program for next summer into a much larger program to serve more children.

Dalton said his hope is that not only will the Harrisburg Brethren in Christ Church continue to host the program, but it will spill out to other churches and community centers throughout the area, not only for the sake of learning math, but for the sake of bringing together religious leaders and kids of different races.

"This program, if exposed, can have traction to it. It's not the wheel. It's a spoke in the wheel. It can help our children at least have a chance,” Baxter said. “You're not cursing the darkness, but you're lighting a candle."

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